What you can learn from a well-funded startup flop

A startup that sought to make electric cars more popular, Better Place, raised more than $800 million in funding before going belly up, writes Peter S. Cohan. The startup's troubles emphasize the importance of locating your business near your customers, verifying your assumptions before scaling up and being willing to stray from approaches you've used in the past, he writes. "Cling too firmly to the reasoning you used in the past and you might repeat prior decisions that were right for your last business, but actually impede the success of your new venture," he writes.